Exploiting Metal Coating of Carbon Nanotubes for Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Probes

By exploiting the metal coating of carbon nanotube (CNT) tips for a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), we demonstrated atomic imaging/spectroscopy and showed their potential for electrical nanoprobes. A CNT glued to a W tip was uniformly coated with a thin W layer 3–6 nm thick. Using this tip, sta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 2005-07, Vol.44 (7S), p.5336
Main Authors: Murata, Yuya, Yoshimoto, Shinya, Kishida, Masaru, Maeda, Daisuke, Yasuda, Tatsuro, Ikuno, Takashi, Honda, Shin-ichi, Okado, Hideaki, Hobara, Rei, Matsuda, Iwao, Hasegawa, Shuji, Oura, Kenjiro, Katayama, Mitsuhiro
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:By exploiting the metal coating of carbon nanotube (CNT) tips for a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), we demonstrated atomic imaging/spectroscopy and showed their potential for electrical nanoprobes. A CNT glued to a W tip was uniformly coated with a thin W layer 3–6 nm thick. Using this tip, stable atomic imaging and spectroscopy were carried out on clean Si(111)-7×7 and Si(100)-2×1 surfaces. The mechanical flexibility of the coated CNT was maintained by virtue of the thin-layer coating, enabling repeated direct contact to the sample surface. Two W-coated CNT tips were brought together within a distance of approximately 50 nm. These results indicate that the tips are useful for electronic transport measurements on a nanometer scale after installation into a multiprobe STM.
ISSN:0021-4922
1347-4065
DOI:10.1143/JJAP.44.5336